A society in which people are always truthful and cannot lie

In My Humble Opinion
21

The social problem of little white lies (“Do I look fat?”) isn’t with the truth or the lies. It’s with the hypocrisy that we all like to think less of others (“Yes, you do look fat; because you are!”) while blithely assuming that everyone around us is just amazed and in awe of our own consummate wonderfulness (“Why no; you’re the epitome of svelte beauty and appropriate weight!”)

The “little white lie” is each of us helping the folks around us to hold their false ideas that they’re much better than their peers. Ideas that have all sorts of other pernicious social side effects.

In a society which lacked those lies, perhaps we’d all simply be more realistic that, yes indeed, our farts smell too. And be therefore much more willing to get along with our fellow humans rather than condescending to them.

22

I’m not sure whether it would be appealing or not.

One possible response could be a culture in which people never, ever share their feelings or ask about their feelings. Because if you ask “Do you love me?” you have to live with the answers. And if you say “I love you” to me on a regular basis, it’s going to be awfully suspicious if one day you stop saying it. So instead, you might wind up with a society in which no honest conversation about feelings ever happens, good or bad. Maybe the closest thing to an ardent expression of love is to say something like “I’m sitting next to you.”

Another possibility is to lie with games of logic. If you end every sentence with “or not” then, technically, you never lied. :slight_smile:

23

Agreed. I’m sure society would learn to accept pure truth, and would put the era of “white lies” behind as a childish folly. We’d learn to cope with what we really already know: as you observed, white lies of this sort don’t really fool anybody. The “Do I look fat?” guy already knows darn well how fat he is.

The loss of the skilled diplomat would be a sad thing, but it would be nicely balanced by the loss of the lawyers. We wouldn’t need long, complicated contracts: we’d reach an agreement in principle right away, and sign our names to that. No more loopholes and fine print.

24

After dealing with the question of defining what the truth is for this situation, and questions of self-deception and so on, the next big question is whether you’re speaking of suddenly imposing such a restriction on existing society, or wondering what a society would be like that developed under this restriction in the first place.

A society that developed under such a restriction would likely be nigh-unrecognizable to us. All of our social interaction and culture is touched upon by falsehoods great and small, and it developed that way. Every interaction we now take for granted would have to be examined, even if it doesn’t contain lying or falsehood, to see if the practice originated in something that was caused by the possibility of falsehood.

Consider a common greeting custom like shaking hands. As far as I’m aware, we don’t know for certain why this tradition originated, but I’ve read it’s suspected to be meant as a demonstration that the individuals have no weapons in their right hands. Would such a custom have ever developed in a world where if you declare you come in peace, it is known to be true? Unlikely.

I’ve thought about this a few times myself in the past, but never really been able to figure out what a world like that would look like, since it’s so vastly alien in every way, down to the very basics of culture, that we can’t assume anything about human development happened in even a vaguely similar way (obviously all of history would be different, at least).

On the other hand, if such a rule were suddenly imposed on the world today, I imagine it would lead to a complete collapse of the social order. Society and humanity would probably survive in the long term, but it would be a very, very rough patch. Millions would be unwilling to go out and do anything, speak to anyone, and so on. Many more would simply refuse to speak at all, saying nothing most of the time. Entire swaths of the economy would collapse overnight, international relations would instantly grind to a halt.

International relations? Hell, it’d be lucky if governments continued to function at all. Optimistically, all crucial functions would still be performed, but anything beyond that, it’d be hard to say. I wonder if we’d have actual angry mobs demanding answers now that politicians are forced to speak the truth?

I think I am curious and will have to read some of the books mentioned above. The movie I have seen and found to be okay, but not really something to look at in a serious consideration of this topic. It was a comedy and played for laughs, not a serious exploration of what a world without the ability to lie would look like.

25

Picture this: an airborne virus spreads rapidly across the globe which has the effect of eliminating the ability to lie. At first, people discover how uncomfortable honesty can be, so the overall quantity of discourse declines precipitously. But people generally like to talk, because it helps keep their brains from working too much. Hence, the obvious happens: the languages themselves gradually change in a way that facilitates convenient obfuscation. Within about a generation, we would all be back to about where we were.

What I would find more interesting would be a society where all its members were ridiculously good at reading body language. The ability to lie remains intact, but it is pointless. Even if you say nothing, your physical reaction would reveal you without fail. Telephone conversations would be popular (although tonal inflection would serve in place of body language). In such a society, there would be very little physical combat (or sport) because the participants would not be able to disguise their own moves: a fight would look like two people standing and staring each other down, and people would be getting into these kind of fights numerous times a day, just to relieve stress.

26

China Mieville’s Embassytown, spoiler alert, deals with this: humans meet an alien species who are incapable of lying, barely capable even of conceiving of lying. They have an annual festival at which different people try to say something–anything–untrue, and everyone thinks it’s totally hilarious to watch them try, because they fail completely.

Another spoiler alert, an alien race in Three Body Problem has the same difficulty.

27

I think you’d end up with a culture heavily focused on physical pleasure, since most other forms of pleasure are no longer possible. Removing all fiction is a huge thing; most songs go away, most games, stories and shows become impossible. Presumably people can’t even force themselves to show an old movie, since that’s indirectly lying.

28

Don’t set your hopes too high.

29

Citi has an ad campaign called “Say what you mean” in which they show people being totally truthful. Here’s one of a couple on a date. The way it’s presented, it doesn’t seem like it would be too bad. You’d really know where you stood with other people.